when on the Mediterranean sailed "Phoenicians, mariners renowned, greedy
merchantmen with countless gauds in a black ship."

I had just begun to play that I was a young woman of Tyre, taken on an
adventurous excursion by an indulgent father, when presto! Lady
Turnour's voice brought me back to the present with a jump. There's
nothing Homeric about her!

She and Sir Samuel had finished their luncheon, and so had several other
people. There was an exodus of well-dressed, nice-looking women from
dining-room to terrace, and conscious that I ought to have been herding
among their maids, I fled with haste and humility. What right had I, in
this sweet place divinely fit to be a rest-cure for goddesses tired of
the social diversions of Olympus?

I scuttled off to the car, and stood ready to serve my mistress when it
should please her to be tucked under her rugs.

Despite delays, the chauffeur had finished whatever had to be done, and
soon we were spinning away from Valescure, far away, into a world of
flowers.

Black cypresses soared skyward, so clean cut, so definite, that I seemed
to hear them, crystal-shrill, like the sharp notes in music, as they
leaped darkly out from a silver monotone of olives and a delicate ripple
of pearly plum or pear blossom. Mimosas poured floods of gold over the
spring landscape, blazing violently against the cloudless blue. Bloom of
peach and apple tree garlanded our road on either side; the way was
jewelled with roses; and acres of hyacinths stretched into the distance,
their perfume softening the keenness of the breeze.